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Month: March 2012

The general purpose of a weather instrument shelter is to protect the monitoring equipment inside which may consist of any number of items such as thermometers, hygrometers,etc from direct sunlight, wind & precipitation. It is important that weather instruments inside the unit have adequate natural ventilation. The double sloping roof with airflow in between roof panels should face direct sunlight.
My shelter is based on the plan made by our National Meteorological Service.

Sawing finished, proceeding to assembly.Gluing wood

Every side must have double laths fixed at right angles. The right angles prevent the wind blowing on thermometer, so it is measuring real air temperature and not wind chill (felt air temperature on exposed skin due to wind). The laths should not be to close together to ensure adequate ventilation.

All the laths glued to the frame.Painted and ready for final assembly.

All the parts painted white and ready for assembly. White colour increases albedo and prevents the Sun to heat up inside of the shelter, that would result in incorrect detector readings.

After more than a month break, the Sun is active again and sunspot 1429 is crackling with strong flares. Last days we got two X-class and some M-class flares. All that happened during these day was easily detected with my SID detector.

Mars is again moving to opposition, rising in the east as the sun sets in the west on the 3rd of March 2012. Opposition will occur at 20:35 UT. Mars will have a visual magnitude of -1.23, a size of about 13.9 arcseconds and will be about 0.67 AU away from Earth. At opposition, it will be at coordinates (J2000) 11h06m, +10°21′ in the constellation of Leo. Waxing gibbous Moon will be about 40° to the west of Mars so scattered light could affect your observing.

Few days ago the skies were clear and I took some pictures when it was at highest point in the sky.